She's one of 450 state workers laid-off over the past two years to save the state money.

While she struggles to make ends meet, the NBC2 Investigators uncovered state employees charged hundreds of thousands of dollars in employee gifts on their state-issued credit cards.

They used $265,000 to buy gift cards to places like Wal-mart, Best Buy, Starbucks and Chili's. State agencies also spent more than $40,000 for retirement gifts, like hotel stays and department store gifts.

Those same records revealed the state spent an additional $10,000 for fresh flowers.

The largest purchase of flowers came from a Tallahassee florist: $600 for former state Representative Ray Sansom. The flowers were used in a ceremony to induct Sansom as the Speaker of the House in 2008.

Ironically, Sansom's career ended in scandal. He resigned from office and is now under investigation for grand theft and conspiracy.

"I don't think that flowers are necessarily something that is a state priority, certainly during a tough economic time," said Representative Nick Thompson (R-Fort Myers).

While a state statute allows agencies to give employees incentives and retirement gifts up to $100, as Representative Thompson put it, "just because you can, doesn't mean you should."

Based on our findings, he wants more information from state agency heads on what they are spending.

"They better have some answers as we go through this budget process," Thompson said.

All state agency secretaries declined our request for on-camera interviews about the purchases, so we went to their boss, Governor Charlie Crist for answers.

Andy Pierrotti: Do you think the purchasing card program needs reform?Crist: It may.Andy: It may, why?Crist: Because the economy is tight.Andy: Gift card purchases; is that an appropriate way to spend taxpayer money?Crist: I would not recommend it. Andy: Why? Crist: Because money is tight. Andy: What would you say to your state agency heads about those purchases? Crist: They should stop doing it.

While the governor walked away from the rest of our questions, the state's chief financial officer took action.

Alex Sink sent a letter to each state agency asking it to "review its program plan" involving its purchasing cards program.

"We made them aware. We definitely made them aware. We made the governor's office aware that this was perhaps not the proper use of these [purchasing cards]," Sink told us.

Linda Heckrodt knows pork spending when she sees it, and wonders what the state could have saved if agencies were more frugal during the recession.

"I think if they hadn't had been wasting all that money, they could have kept me out there, because I was a good worker," Heckrodt said.

State lawmakers plan to use our findings to push forward a referendum that could make state spending more transparent by putting more financial information on the internet.

Now that we're getting into the second half of August, it's the the time of year when we really start to monitor the far eastern Atlantic for budding tropical waves that could potentially develop into tropical storms or hurricanes.